Feedback

I gave a draft of my novel to my friend Peter for some feedback, positive or otherwise. I rang him last night, figuring a week was enough time for him to formulate his expressions of ecstasy.

“Did you read it?”

“I read it. Man, I read it. Let me tell you… It was amazing.”

“My writing?”

“No, no. I mean, listen to what happened.”

“Peter, did you read it?”

“So I was on my way to bed, right? And I’d read about thirty pages, I was getting pretty into it. So I was walking down the hallway and I realised I needed to pee, so I went into the bathroom. Thing was, I had a bowl of cornflakes in one hand, and your book in the other. You’ve seen the way Jane keeps that bathroom, right? I mean, it was a mess. There was bottles everywhere, nowhere I could put down the bowl for a second…”

“Why didn’t you go and put everything down in your room and then go back to piss?”

”...so I couldn’t put the bowl down and I needed at least one hand. So I draped your story over the top of the radiator. It was fine. Then, just as I was finishing up it just fell. I mean, I could see it slipping, but I thought it was just slipping a little bit. Then whoosh it slid off all of a sudden.”

“Let me guess”

“Yeah! Into the toilet! Hahaha!”

“OK…”

“So I picked it out, of course, but it had gotten pretty wet, you know? And not just wet. But I was worried that it might be your only copy or whatever…”

“It isn’t.”

”...so I decided to put it into the hotpress for the night. I was getting into it too, so I wanted to keep reading. I put it into the hotpress and the next morning it was grand and dry but it kind of smelled, you know? It actually stank. Really.”

“That’s disgusting.”

“You’re telling me. And it was my pee, so I didn’t mind too much. I kept reading. But Jesus, I’ve had a bad week. I mean, people were really shying away on the train. Even in the park. I thought it’d be OK in the park. Wind carries that kind of thing, you know.”

“So you read the whole thing? What did you think?”

“I read the whole thing. And man, it was tough going. With the piss and all.”

“Did you like it?”

“I don’t think our coffee place wants me back any time soon. They thought I was homeless.”